Ten years after my father disowned me for turning down the family business to join the Army as a doctor, I showed up to my grandfather’s state funeral in my full dress uniform covered in campaign ribbons, and the first words out of Arthur Vance’s mouth, loud enough for every retired general and defense executive in the room to hear, were a sneering joke about whether the whole family should line up for free aspirin from the Army medic.

The floorboards creaked on the second floor.

They were moving fast.

Too fast.

I had maybe sixty seconds before they reached the third-floor landing.

I looked around the study.

One door leading out to the hall.

One window overlooking the back porch roof.

No other exits.

I slipped the canvas bag over my head and tightened the strap across my chest.

The .38 went into my waistband at the small of my back.

The nine millimetre came up in both hands.

Army training kicked in.

Fear didn’t disappear—it just moved to a different part of my brain. The part that didn’t think. The part that just acted.

I moved to the side of the door.

Pressed my back against the wall.

Listened.

Three sets of footsteps on the stairs.

Wait—three.

Where was the fourth?

“Check the bedrooms,” a voice said on the landing. “She might be hiding in a closet.”

Two pairs of footsteps moved away.

One pair stopped directly outside the study door.

The handle turned.

The door swung inward.

A man stepped through.

Tall.

Broad.

Gun held out in front of him.

He swept the flashlight left.

Then right.

He hadn’t seen me yet.

I moved before he could.

One step.

Arm around his throat.

Gun pressed hard into the soft spot beneath his ear.

“Make a sound,” I whispered, “and I blow your brains out all over this wall.”

He froze.

I felt the tremor run through him.

Good.

“Who sent you?” I said.

“Arthur Vance,” he gasped.

I squeezed harder.

“Liar. My father doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Someone called,” he said. “Someone high up. Said you were here. Said you had something that didn’t belong to you. Said we got a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus if we left no witnesses.”

Someone high up.

Reed had said he was the only one I could trust.

But Reed had also been the only one who knew exactly where I was going.

The man in my arms tensed.

He was going to try something.

I slammed the butt of my gun into the side of his head.

He dropped like a stone.

I caught him before he hit the floor.

Lowered him silently.

Two more men were still searching the second floor.

The fourth—whoever he was—was still unaccounted for.

I stepped over the unconscious man and moved to the doorway.

Peered into the hall.

Clear.

The stairs were to my left.

I could try to fight my way down.

Two against one wasn’t impossible.

But they had guns.

And if I missed, the files got destroyed.

And the men who’d sent them walked free.

I made the decision in a heartbeat.

I went back into the study.

Climbed onto the windowsill.

The roof below sloped steeply toward the back of the house.

It was a good twelve feet down to the porch roof.

Then another ten to the ground.

I didn’t hesitate.

I jumped.

Landed hard on the slate shingles.

Slid ten feet before I caught myself on the gutter.

Pain shot up my left ankle.

I ignored it.

Below me, I heard shouting from inside the house.

They’d found their friend.

They knew I’d escaped.

“Out back!” someone yelled. “She went out the window!”

I scrambled along the roof edge to the corner.

Dropped the ten feet to the ground.

Rolled.

Came up shooting.

Two men burst through the back door.

I fired twice.

Not to hit.

To warn.

The bullets kicked up dirt at their feet.

They dove for cover.

I turned and ran into the woods.

The ankle screamed with every step.

Branches whipped my face.

Thorns tore at my uniform.

Behind me, I heard more shouting.

More gunshots.

Bullets zipped through the trees around me.

They were firing blindly.

But blind bullets still kill.

I ran until my lungs burned.

Until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Until the only sound was my own ragged breathing and the thud of my heart.

I collapsed behind a massive oak tree.

Gasping.

Trying to think.

Someone had betrayed me.

Either Reed had been playing me all along.

Or there was a leak in his office.

Either way, the safe house was compromised.

Torres was probably dead already.

I couldn’t call the number Reed had given me.

I couldn’t go to the police.

My father owned half the cops in Virginia.

I was alone.

Hurt.

Hunted.

And I carried the only evidence that could bring down a defence contracting empire and half the Pentagon with it.

I pulled the photo from my pocket.

Stared at it in the dark.

My brave girl.

I am so proud.

I am so sorry.

I wiped the blood from a cut on my forehead.

Tucked the photo away.

Okay, Grandpa, I thought.

You wanted me to fight.

I’m fighting.

I got to my feet.

The ankle was bad—probably sprained, possibly fractured—but it would hold.

I had to move.

They’d bring dogs soon.

I started walking.

West.

Away from the house.

Away from the road.

Toward the mountains.

I walked for three hours.

The sun was coming up when I reached a small general store on the edge of a town I didn’t recognise.

My uniform was torn.

My face was scratched.

I looked like I’d been through a war.

Which, in a way, I had.

The old man behind the counter stared at me for a long moment.

Then he reached under the counter and pulled out a phone.

“Need to make a call?” he asked.

I nodded.

He pushed it across.

I didn’t call Reed.

I called the only other person in the world who might help me.

The only person who’d never been part of the Vance machine.

It rang four times.

“Hello?” a familiar voice said.

“Sarah,” I said. “It’s Clarissa. I need your help. And I need it now.”

Sarah Carter had been my best friend since medical school.

She was a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins.

She had no ties to my family.

No ties to Washington.

And she owed me a life.

Literally.

“What happened?” she said. She heard it in my voice. The urgency. The fear.

“I can’t explain over the phone,” I said. “Can you come get me? I’m in western Virginia. Near a town called Blackthorn.”

“I’m leaving in ten minutes,” she said. No hesitation. No questions. That was Sarah. “Send me your location. And Clarissa—whatever it is, I’ve got you. Always.”

She hung up.

I gave the old man twenty dollars for the phone call and a bottle of water.

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded.

“Those men who were asking about you an hour ago,” he said quietly. “They didn’t look like police.”

“They aren’t,” I said.

He reached under the counter again.

Pulled out a hunting knife.

Sheath worn smooth from years of use.

“For the road,” he said.

I took it.

I didn’t ask why he was helping me.

Sometimes in this world, people just do.

I waited at the end of the driveway.

Hiding in the trees.

Watching.

Every car that passed made me flinch.

Every sound in the woods made me reach for my gun.

Two hours later, Sarah’s beat-up Subaru pulled into view.

She saw me.

Stopped.

Jumped out.

Her face went white when she saw my condition.

“Jesus Christ, Clarissa,” she said. “What did they do to you?”

“Later,” I said. “Right now, we need to go. And we need to take back roads. No highways. No tolls. No anything that can be traced.”

She didn’t argue.

I climbed into the passenger seat.

The canvas bag went onto the floor between my feet.

I didn’t let it out of my sight.

Not for a second.

Sarah pulled onto the road.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Baltimore,” I said. “Your place. And Sarah—when we get there, I’m going to tell you something that’s going to make you want to throw up. And then I’m going to ask you to help me do something that could get both of us killed.”

She glanced at me.

“Good,” she said. “I’ve been bored lately.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

But as we drove away, I couldn’t shake the question that kept turning over and over in my head.

Who had betrayed me?

If it wasn’t Reed—then who?

And if it was Reed…

Then the enemy wasn’t just my father.